Beartooth Highway - 2011 Trip - Day 2

Start Location: Ritzville, WA
Ending Location: Livingston, MT
Miles Today: 486
Trip Miles: 725
States Visited: 3
Provinces Visited: 0
Low Temp: 61.0° F
High Temp: 89.1° F
Min Elevation: 1841'
Max Elevation: 6423'

Route Map:

Today was a long day but we knew it would be.  It was also a pretty easy day.  We were on I-90 all day and the traffic was very light.  We would sometimes go several miles without seeing any traffic in our direction.  The only problem was construction.  I'm sure half of I-90 is under construction in the state of Montana.  It wouldn't have been too bad but some of the construction zones were miles long even they were only working on one small section.  Besides that the speed limit was sometimes down to 35 in the construction zone.  It's probably a good thing the traffic was so light.

To be honest we didn't see anything particularly interesting today with the possible exception of the North Idaho Motorcycle Museum.  Normally we would have stopped but we knew we would have a long day - we'll have to save this one for another day.  We did cross the Continental Divide and crossed numerous mountain passes.  We hope to make up for all of that tomorrow.  The Beartooth Highway is supposed to be one of the premier scenic roads in America as well as being one of the great motorcycle rides.  We have been trying to figure out what the conditions will be tomorrow and this is the best site we have been able to find with weather conditions.  It looks like the temperature will be acceptable and no participation precipitation but there may be some cloud cover.  Hard to say what that will mean.  We also found a site with actual road conditions but it is for last week and hasn't been updated yet for this week.  We're assuming it won't be too different.